


Metamorphosis

by MagalaBee



Category: Xenoblade Chronicles
Genre: Post-Game(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-07
Updated: 2017-09-07
Packaged: 2018-12-24 21:13:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,571
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12021117
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MagalaBee/pseuds/MagalaBee
Summary: When the wars end and the world is rebuilt, not everything came back in perfect little pieces. Melia, the queen of the High Entia, is left without family, without home, and without direction. Until, that is, a certain orange nopon arrives at her door with his family in tow, claiming a new role as the nurse maid of the 'sick' young queen.





	Metamorphosis

It was strange. The world had started over, kept turning and growing and living, yet she felt like a ghost in its wake. Bionis was dead, for all intents and purposes, and Mechonis had gone with it. The Gods that she had prayed to and so revered were gone now– they had never really been what she believed in the first place, yet still, she felt like they had been stolen from her.

Just like her mother.

Just like her father.

Just like her brother.

Just like her people.

Melia couldn’t remember when she had laid down on her bed, or how long it had been since. She drifted in and out of sleep so many times. With the world put back together and the fighting finally over, the emptiness had caught up to her. She had run out of smiles to give to her friends within minutes and retreated to the empty shell of a palace that used to be her home.

She did not know how many days she stayed there alone, while the remnants of the High Entia still lingered with the homs. They were waiting for someone to tell them that their city was safe again.

Melia was waiting for someone to tell her that she was still alive.

It was strange to wake up and find herself not-alone. Alone had become so normal, so natural, for a ghost like her. When Melia was finally found, she didn’t know what to say.

“Melly! Has Melly eaten? Melly looks sick–” Riki was quick to fill the silence, waddling over to her quickly and jumping onto her bed. His larger second hands took her chin, turning her face back and forth. She was gaunt, pale, her eyes gone grey and cloudy, and her wings were limp with thinning feathers. But how strange it was, to be touched.

“I’m… fine…” she muttered, her voice was hoarse. “Go home, Riki.”

“Hero-pon must never leave friend who is sick,” he insisted, patting her cheek with one massive furry palm. Melia flinched, pulling away.

“Stop it, I’m fine, just let me sleep, if you please.”

Riki ignored her, and as he hopped off of her bed, Melia realized that he was not alone. In the doorway of her bedchamber, a mass of pink peeked inside. She whispered to Riki as he hurried back to her.

“How is she, Riki?”

“Melly needs food. All will be good after she eats,” he nodded.

Melia squinted, feeling patronized by their words. Why had Riki brought his wife to Alcamoth? 

Oka waved one of her own large hands at Melia from the other side of the room, her eyes growing big with a toothy little smile. “Good morning, Miss Queen!”

Queen…

That’s right.

Kallain had dubbed her queen, to become Empress in one year’s time.

Melia hugged her knees into her chest, her head falling to rest upon them as she shuddered. What kind of queen had no kingdom? No family, no friends, no p–

“Papa! Papa, is Queen Bird ok?”

“Can we play with her?

“No, littlepons, Melly needs food, we must cook good foods for her,” Riki chided, shooing away children from the bedroom door.

Melia looking back up, her eyes staining pink with the tears she wanted to shed. His children too? He had brought his entire family?!

Oka waved her hand again and said, “Go back to sleep, Miss Queen! Oka promise, she will make something very good for you. You will feel better soon.”

Melia wasn’t so sure about that, but she laid back down anyway and buried her head into her pillows.

* * *

In the end, Melia ate, though she did not taste much. When thirteen faced stared at her until she took a bite, she had precious few options. Eating made her feel nauseous, but having done nothing for as long as she had, she knew that it must be from malnutrition.

Oka smiled as Melia ate, and she seemed so proud of herself. The pink Nopon who had traveled so far from home, fixing supper for the High Entian Queen. A grandiose day dream for Oka.

A rather melancholic evening for Melia.

“Melly, Melly,” Riki nudged her as he ate more than his share of the fish stew. “Is Melly feeling better?”

“I’m not sick, Riki,” she muttered, but did not even try to smile for him.  “You don’t have to hover, I assure you.”

Once again, the Nopon ignored her and continued to speak, “Riki take Oka and littlepons on trip! We want littlepons to see world, meet all kinds of not-pons. Maybe they be merchants someday, need to know people outside Makna. Or maybe they become heropons like Riki.”

Melia sighed, moving around some pieces of salmon and carrot in her bowl. Stews were an odd dish to High Entia, they tended to eat much lighter meals than this.

“But so few Entia in city, Riki not know what to do! How can littlepons meet all people, when all people not here?”

Melia closed her eyes, clenching them shut as tightly as she could.

“Riki think we stay here a bit. Littlepons want to meet Melly so much, after Riki tells them how pretty she is.”

Her eyes opened again and she looked down at the creature of yellow and orange fur. “Stay? Riki, that is… unprecedented, no one simply comes to the palace of Alcamoth and demands to be accommodated–”

“Riki knows!” he chirped and looked up at her before, once again, patting her face with his large extra hand. “But Melly sick. So Riki will stay.”

* * *

In the proceeding weeks, Melia had come to assume that anyone who did not eat at least six meals a day was ‘sick’ in the eyes of the Nopon. Oka cooked giant meals every day in the palace kitchens, and the smell of it had filled the entire royal chambers with scents of spice and warmth. It was different than Melia was used to. Usually, the palace smelled of clean marble and cool air, and the distinct lack of dust.

Now, it smelled like children and stews and a very distinct _presence_ of dust.

As Riki coaxed her out of bed every day, Melia found it marginally easier to think about the state of Alcamoth and her people. They were scattered to the winds now, but not impossible to find. Those who had already returned were cleaning the city as best they could. Rebuilding fountains and houses, making lists of those who might have died. Some of the returning came to the palace and hesitantly sought her audience, but without a full staff, Melia could be hard to find in the many halls.

It was strange to be here without the formalities. They used to be the backbone of High Entian culture, and yet without them, everything still stood in place.

“Make new fountain to Riki, Heropon!” Riki had suggested as Melia sat and looked over some of the ideas her people had proposed for repairing the city center. “Right here!”

Melia’s mouth skewed to one side. “As tempting as it is, I think we should focus our efforts on a memorial garden. So many were–”  _turned into Telethia_  “– lost from us. It may do good for the people to have a place to put their prayers.”

Not that prayers meant anything anymore, but it was a difficult habit to break.

“Fine fine, garden. But then, fountain of Heropon,” he suggested, nudging her side as he did.

“I’ll consider it,” Melia agreed, though her voice lacked the humor to carry such a statement. She was trying to go through the motions, for Riki’s sake if not her own, but her eyes were still glassy, her pallor still drawn. She did not look hollow anymore, but she was a far and away shadow of who she had once been.

Riki watched her as she stared at the papers. He noted the exact moment that her mind drifted away from the material in front of her, turning to the ghosts that lingered in her mind. When her eyes stared through the sheets, when her shoulders drooped ever so slightly, when her wings closed inward, she was thinking of her brother. Her father.

What would Kallian say?

What would the Emperor say?

What, even, would her mother say, who had died so long ago when Mellia was just a child?

She was snapped out of her revery by Riki’s soft hand on her cheek, patting it three times.

“Is ok if Melly wants to make Brother-Bird fountain instead,” he offered.

She pinched the bridge of her nose hard in a vain attempt to prevent tears. But still, the proposal blueprints were quickly freckled with drops of water.

* * *

After three years, Alcamoth began to feel like home again. Most of the High Entia who had fled returned, and with open borders instated, Mechons and Homs began to filter in too. Piece by piece, the city filled up with noise and trade and traffic. Melia was able to hire a palace staff again and begin trade treaties with the Homs colonies.

Riki encouraged the others to visit, writing letters to Reyn and Sharla and Dunban when Melia wasn’t looking. The guests always showed up, with encouraging smiles and questions and hugs.

They recognized the statue in the memorial garden, and offered her belated condolences when they could.

Shulk did not come. Reyn said that he didn’t come to much these days, and often spent time traveling the wilds.

Melia suspected he wouldn’t be satisfied with the world until he had observed every corner of it for himself.

“Don’t worry,” Fiora had assured her the week before, when they had all come after a banquet that Melia hosted to honor a donation of new city-wide trams made by the Mechon. “He’ll be fine. I think he’ll be comforted the most if we just keep going on without him. Shulk has never had a problem catching up.”

Melia sighed, reaching up one hand to stroke one of her wings, making sure each feather was in place. Her wings were starting to fill out again, thicken up and soften. Her hair did the same. Even her eyes had started to look a little less grey these days.

“Melly! Melly Melly Melly Melly–” Her name was repeated in a large chorus as eight of the littlepons came bounding up to her. She sat on a balcony, looking down at the City of Alcamoth from above and admiring the way it lit up at night– just like she remembered.

“Yes?” she asked them all. By now, she had learned all of their names. Riki had to recite them for her everyday for two months in the beginning (Tema, Usa, Oki, Lulu, Ero, Beba, Niki, Weki, Quino, Resa, and Bo), but once she started paying attention, they were all very easy to tell apart.

“Melly, Papa says is almost time for dinner! Come come come, we hungry, not allowed to eat without you!” Ero bounced, waving his little arms as if they were wings– like hers– and he could fly.

“Tema made supper, very good,” Bo interjected. “Tema says she make super for now, because Mama too tired.” In the three years that Riki and his family had been living with her, Melia had not been surprised when Oka announced she was pregnant. Again. Having eleven children was a feat in itself, but apparently, the affection that the Nopon woman pretended to withhold from her husband was actually quite strong. In moments when they thought they were alone, Melia had seen Oka preening and cuddling Riki as if he were the most handsome prince in a fairy tale.

“Well, then we best not keep Tema waiting,” Melia agreed, pulling herself up from her seat on the balcony. “Maybe you all can find some nice ways to help your mother too? I know she will need it soon.”

“Of course we help Mama, we are good pons!” Weki insisted with pride. As they all walked towards the dining room, the littlepons walked with their extra hands held up and back, not hugging their bellies like most Nopons. They kept their little hands splayed out like feathers.

“Will Melly carry me, if I ask nice?” Lulu peeped at Melia’s feet. She battered her big marble eyes endearingly.

“Perhaps, if you are very polite,” Melia answered with the tip of her head.

“Pretty pretty pleasey pleaaaaase?” Lulu begged, flapping her hand-wings excitedly.

Melia paused, leaving some sense of dramatic suspense for the littlepon. But then she leaned down and scooped the bundle of strawberry tinted fur into the crook of her arm. “Yes, I will, Lulu. Now what do we say?”

“Thank you, Miss Melly!” Lulu squealed, her little feet kicking playfully.

When they reached the dining room– which had become a strange mixture of formal chairs and floor-pillows for family circles, over the years– Melia saw Riki and his wife sitting side-by-side and muttering to one another. Riki had one big hand on Oka’s tummy, which was getting even rounder than usual these days, and his other fixed her bow for her.

“Papa! Papa Papa Papa, Mama Mama Mama–” the littlepons announced, bounding to their parents in hops and leaps.

Lulu wriggled in Melia’s arms until she was put down, then she bound to her parents too as Tema emerged from the kitchen, Oki and Niki helping, with a large pot of yet another type of Nopon fish stew.

Melia sat beside Riki on her neatly folded legs, and she accepted a bowl gratefully. “Tema, this smells absolutely divine.”

“Thank you, Miss Melly!”

Riki grinned up at Melia, “Riki’s littlepons make best food! All because of their good Papa-pon.”

“I have no doubts,” Melia said, bemused. She sipped a spoonful of the thick stew, and it tasted like oregano, apples, and cream. Warm and inviting to her palette, if not a bit rustic for the High Entia Queen. “Very good.”

“Riki knows. Riki is proud.”

The rest of the dinner went as it usually did. The littlepons babbled about their days, the people they had met, the things they had learned. Oka mentioned something about ‘proper nesting’ for the new baby. Riki re-told an exploit of his days as the Hero-pon, and Melia did not correct him when he claimed all of the credit.

At the end of it all, Riki reaching up his big hand and patted her face gently. He smiled a soft smile, knowing in his own strange way.

“Melly does not look so sick anymore.”

“Don’t I? I’ve been sick by your standard for years, Riki.”

“Yes, but not anymore. Melly better now.”

She laughed and shrugged her shoulders. “You truly are a mystery, Riki. I’ve insisted on my own wellness for three years, and you only now believe me?”

“Only now has Riki heard you laugh.”

Melia paused, staring at the Nopon before her eyes moved to every other ‘pon in the room. All thirteen of them lookd back, with little smiles and nods of approval. When she looked at the children– the brothers and sisters sharing their plates and pestering one another and immitating her wings– she thought of how much Kallian would laugh, not how much it hurt never to hear his voice again.

She shook her head, smiling as she did, and placed one of her own hands on Riki’s face in return. “My hero-pon.”


End file.
